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Gem Club’s new album is beautiful, delicate, simple, and unfortunately very monotonous and boring. Individually, each of the songs on this album are great. Each song rolls over you (insert crappy metaphor) and appeals to your spirit of calmness and beauty. Overall, I can’t think of a single song that I don’t enjoy on the entire record. The problem is that the songs sound very (very) similar and when played straight through as an album the songs just all sound the same. There is no tempo change, no dynamic sonic shifts on this album. The piano is played they same way (pretty much just chords) the entire album – sparsely. Christopher Barnes’s voice rarely registers above a whisper and the percussion is minimal. Added all together it becomes difficult, even after becoming familiar with the songs, to identify where one song ends and the next begins.

This album would be the perfect addition to any playlist (set on random) but played together as a whole it’s just not interesting enough or dynamic enough to keep your attention and keep you in moment.

So, for whatever reason, I decided to do a little something different with my review of They Might Be Giants new album Join Us. I decided that I wanted to do a haiku review. Hey, that rhymes. But rhymes have no place here. This is an experiment, so hopefully it works. Here we go…

“Join Us” for good times,
Like dipping your balls in mayo,
No, that’s a good thing.

I generally view albums like this (acoustic albums) as gimmicks. I put them in the same category as anthologies and cover albums. Something easy to put out there for the sole purpose of making money. And as such, I rarely take the time to listen to these types of albums and almost never buy them.

That said, I do kinda like this album. And please note the use of the word “kinda” there.

This album, acoustic versions of older Alkaline Trio songs, is good but there are no surprises here. The band does at least take some time to rework the songs so they sound good in this arrangement and the production is interesting. For the most part, the songs sound pretty well thought out and not just thrown together on the cheap and easy. The songs are layered with production and the depth of each song is actually surprising.

The real problem here is that these are all songs that exist on other albums and most of them are really great songs in their original form. So when it comes down to it, I’d rather listen to the original, electric version of “Private Eye” then this new acoustic version. And while the new version of “Radio” is kinda neat, there is an energy and emotional drive in the original version that just doesn’t exist here.

If you are a fan of Alkaline Trio you might enjoy this but if you are new to the band I’d recommend picking up the original version of each and every one of these songs.

Sixteen songs on the ukulele by Eddie Vedder is 16 songs too many.

If you can get past the vocals it’s unlikely you’ll find very many albums this year that are written better and performed with more passion and care.